Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

Perfect World Entertainment has just released a video for their forthcoming Dungeons & Dragons-based MMO, Neverwinter, showcasing the Icespire Peak region. The video shows off some winter-themed monsters - Ice Trolls, Frost Giants, Winter Wolves and Ice Golems. Last week, we speculated on the inclusion of giants in Neverwinter, and this video confirms it.

This week, we'll engage in even more outlandish speculation, looking at the weirder side of D&D monsters. Some of these are awesome and iconic monsters we want to see in Neverwinter. Some of them seem more like the fevered brain-doodles of an over-tired DM trying to find new ways to screw his players over.

Slimes, Fungi and Mold

Much of Dungeons & Dragons takes place in subterranean locales - crypts, catacombs, tunnels, caves, et cetera. Green plants cannot grow in these spaces since there is no sunlight, but the dank, dark and often humid nature of underground spaces create ideal growth conditions for lichens, mold, fungi and other slimy, nasty things. And in the grand D&D tradition, if something is gross, it is often also deadly. Even when they don't make any real sense as adversaries.

Though they have fallen in prominence in recent years, there were once vast swarms of slime-monsters creating deadly environmental hazards in 2nd Edition dungeons. They ranged from transparent slithering slime and psionic Grey Ooze to the mighty Gelatinous Cube, a nightmare serving of evil Jell-O that swallowed adventurers whole and dissolved everything but their magic items. Fungus and mold was anthropomorphized into the Myconid and Vegepygmy, respectively - humanoid monsters with varying degrees of intelligence, composed entirely of non-meat organic matter.

Of the huge assortment of oozes, slimes, puddings, fungi and molds, the Gelatinous Cube is perhaps the most likely to slither and jiggle its way into Neverwinter. It was originally designed by Gary Gygax as a sort of robo-vac for dungeons - 10 feet per side, the same as a standard dungeon passageway, it would slither down the hallways and dissolve any organic material (read: dead adventurers and monster corpses) it came across, the ultimate in self-cleaning dungeon technology.